Based in the belief that diverse leadership results in better outcomes – for practices, organizations and the industry as a whole – Ophthalmic World Leaders (OWL) works across ophthalmology to provide professional and personal development and opportunities for collaboration. In this blog, OWL members share insights on building the skill sets and confidence required of today’s ophthalmic leaders.

BLOG: Marketing4ECPs: Q&A with co-founder Trudi Charest

November 12, 2018

What makes Marketing4ECPs unique in ophthalmology and the eye care industry?

Marketing4ECPs is the only full-service marketing agency founded by both an optometrist and an optician. Combined, we have over 40 years of experience in eye care.

Scot Morris, OD, started his career in an ophthalmology practice before opening his own practice in Denver. I am a licensed optician turned serial entrepreneur, having started an online eye care job site, a training and consulting business, and a successful eye care event planning company. Together with our marketing guru, Kevin Wilhelm, we created a marketing agency that truly knows the eye care industry.

Trudi Charest

What services do you offer at Marketing4ECPs?

Marketing4ECPs launched in 2015 with a proprietary program designed to deliver a unique digital marketing solution not yet seen in eye care. With this all-inclusive program, we take over the entire marketing initiative for practices, including website design, SEO, SEM, social media, pay-per-click advertising, social media advertising, patient communications (emails, text, reminders, recall), content and copyrighting (we even have an optometrist copywriter on staff), promotional campaigns, account management, marketing strategy, video production, medical niche marketing (dry eye, etc), and so much more.

This approach takes marketing to the next level for most practices, helping them dominate their market with a robust digital presence. The services are packaged into an affordable monthly fee that compares favorably to agency rates for this type of program, which allows us to have a proven return on investment.

Is Marketing4ECPs available to any ophthalmology clinic?

While we can tailor our program to any type of practice, whether it is a specialty retina clinic or another medical niche, we only offer our services to one practice in a geographical zone. This is truly a competitive advantage that most marketing companies don’t offer. We feel that, ethically, it makes sense to work with only one organization in a given zone and avoid competing with marketing dollars against a nearby client.

Exclusivity is one of our biggest advantages, but so is our no-contract policy. We don’t make our clients sign any long-term contracts, which forces us to prove our results every month to keep our clientele.

What else is Marketing4ECPs doing to help ophthalmology practices compete?

This year, we launched registration for the first dedicated marketing conference in eye care, EyeInnovate, hosted on Nov. 6 in Los Angeles. We do a lot of speaking across North America on digital marketing and it is always so well received, so we decided to put on an annual conference on how to grow your eye care business with the power of marketing and technology. We had keynote speakers from Google and Yelp, as well as industry marketing experts like Bill Gerber, Dr. Tanya Gill and Dr. Alan Glazier. We even had Randy Jackson from American Idol ending the day with a talk on branding.

Another exciting initiative this year for our agency was the launch of medical niche marketing packages. Besides doing the marketing for practices, we also work with 17 industry suppliers and groups, and our work with several of these companies made it clear that there was an unmet need for specialized medical marketing. Our new packages are designed to help practices that are trying to grow a specific area like dry eye.

Why did your company join OWL?

We learned about OWL from one of your current members and knew it was an organization we needed to join. Not only does it give us access to the leading executives in our industry, but it also works hard to bring collaboration and community together. We are excited to be a part of OWL.